Father’s Day Failures — 5 Sons Only a Dad Could Love

Let’s just be honest—dads always get hosed in the gift department when it comes to Father’s Day. The presents you buy him for Father’s Day—if you remember at all—are almost always way crappier than the nice thoughtful things you got for mom.

But you don’t have to feel too guilty about the miserable son you are because at least you’re not one of these guys. No matter how crappy your Father’s Day gift for your dad is, you can rest easy knowing that, unless you’re planning on using it to kill him or launch a military coup against him, it’s probably a safe bet you won’t crack this list.

Here are five sons only a father could love — barely.

Richard I

Also known as Richard the Lionheart, King Richard I was like a character straight out of ‘Game of Thrones.’ The third son of King Henry II, Richard was far from the king’s favorite and spent most of his life living in northern France.

In 1173, Richard and his brothers Henry and Geoffrey—with the backing of French king Louis VII—launched a rebellion against their father. The revolt was put down the following year but Henry II made the mistake of pardoning his sons. Richard was given control of several English provinces in northern France where he later faced a series of his own revolts due to his cruelty and abuse of the locals.

Tensions between Richard and Henry II continued to grow to the point that Henry the Younger and Geoffrey were sent to subdue their brother. Richard conquered their forces in battle and, in 1189, Richard’s forces defeated Henry II who was forced to name Richard as his heir apparent. Henry II conveniently died two days later and Richard succeeded him as King of England.

Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani

Born in 1952, Sheikh Hamad was the crown prince of Qatar but he grew impatient waiting for his turn on the throne. So, in 1995, he waited until dear old dad was on vacation in Switzerland before launching a bloodless coup to overthrow him.

He froze his father’s assets and forced him to live in exile until 2004. Since seizing power, Sheik Hamad has been an enigmatic figure in the Middle East. He donated $100 million to U.S. relief efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and has been the first Persian Gulf state leader to pursue a dialogue with Israel but he also funded (to the tune of $500 million) the founding of the Al Jazeera media network and has been accused of supporting Hamas and other Islamic terrorist groups.

He currently has 24 children from three different wives. For his sake, we hope he has a better relationship with them than he did with his own father.

Dipendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev

A member of the Nepalese royal family, in 2001 he gunned down his father (the king) along with his mother, two brothers, a sister, two aunts and two uncles before turning the gun on himself.

The tragic incident reportedly grew out of an internal family feud over Dipendra’s plans to marry outside of the imperial Shah clan. To this day, however, Dipendra loyalists claim that the crown prince was made a scapegoat and that the royal family was actually assassinated as part of a conspiracy headed by Dipendra’s younger brother, Gyanendra.

On the plus side for Dipendra, with his father dead, he did actually get to be king. On the down side, his entire reign lasted just three days, all of which he spent in a coma before dying.

Kim Jong Nam

The oldest son of former North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, Nam was actually the heir apparent as Supreme Leader. Jong Nam reportedly had a big love for gambling, alchohol and women—valuable qualities to us here — but apparently not so much to his secretive, iron-fisted dictator father.

The final straw came in 2001 when Jong Nam tried to use a fake Dominican Republic passport that listed his name as Pang Xiong (which translates into “Fat Bear” in Chinese) to try to get into Tokyo Disneyland. Japanese authorities quickly spotted the fake as Jong Nam tried to get through customs at the Tokyo airport and deported him to China. The incident so embarrassed his father that Jong Nam was replaced with his half-brother, Kim Jong Un, in the line of succession. (You got that? Kim Jong Un looks for unicorns and wants to nuke America—and he’s the sane one.)

In recent years, Jong Nam has reportedly gone into hiding out of fear of reprisal from the new North Korean leader. He bounces around between China, Singapore and Portugal but still manages an occasional stop in Macau, the Las Vegas of east Asia.

Kenny Loggins

Yeah, that Kenny Loggins. The ‘Footloose’ and ‘Highway to the Danger Zone’ guy.

In 1979, Loggins was riding the wave of his second consecutive platinum solo album. Unfortunately, his father was not doing so well after a series of small strokes and the prospect of dangerous, painful cardiovascular surgery ahead of him. One day, when the elder Loggins was particularly down, instead of offering love and support, Kenny chose to channel his inner Vince Lombardi and basically told his dad, “Suck it up and take it like a man, you big weenie!” OK, maybe not in those exact words but he put those heartfelt sentiments to music with the song ‘This is It‘ from his 1979 album ‘Keep the Fire.’ As Loggins himself put it:

“One morning, as we visited my father in the hospital, his talk of dying finally got to me, and I exploded. ‘You’ve got some say over how this goes, ya know?’ I demanded. ‘Your attitude will determine your survival.’ Dad fell silent, angry and embarrassed. I looked him in the eyes and said, ‘This is it, dad. Make a choice!’ He had stopped speaking to me, and I was so frustrated I just stormed out of the room, already late for my writing appointment with Michael [McDonald of Doobie Brothers fame]. When I arrived at Mike’s home, my mind suddenly connected the dots and as I once again sang the lines, ‘you think that maybe it’s over, only if you want it to be.’ I began to cry. ‘I’ve got it,’ I announced to Michael, ‘it’s not a love song. It’s a life song.’

Call it what you want, Kenny, but it still doesn’t change the fact that you basically called your dad a pansy as he stared into the icy jaws of death then used that experience to further your own career. The song that would go on to win a Grammy Award and be used as the NBC theme song for their coverage of the 1980 and 1981 NCAA basketball tournaments.

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